During the 1970s, Holloway was an influential member of the Conference of Socialist Economists, particularly in his support of an approach to the state as a social form constituted ultimately by class struggle between capital and the working class.[3] This approach was developed primarily through the critical appropriation of aspects of the German state derivation debate of the early 1970s, in particular the work of Joachim Hirsch, and led him and Sol Picciotto to publish "State and Capital: A Marxist Debate",[4] an anthology of texts from the German debate with a critical introduction. This conception of state, social form and class struggle, within the Conference of Socialist Economists developed current that ultimately gave rise to the Open Marxism school of thought in which Holloway remained a significant participant. This current rejects both traditional Marxist ideas of state monopoly capitalism and innovations such as Poulantzas' Althusserian state theory, and the Regulation school,[5] and affirms the centrality of the class relation between capital and working class, as a struggle.

His 2002 book, Change the World Without Taking Power, has been much debated in Marxist, anarchist and anti-capitalist circles, and contends that the possibility of revolution resides not in the seizure of state apparatuses, but in day-to-day acts of abject refusal of capitalist society – so-called anti-power, or 'the scream' as he puts it. Holloway's thesis has been analysed by thinkers like Tariq Ali and Slavoj Žižek. Critics and supporters alike consider Holloway broadly Autonomist in outlook, and his work is often compared and contrasted with that of figures such as Antonio Negri.

His 2010 book Crack Capitalism carries on with the political ideas developed in Change the World Without Taking Power. Holloway sees the problem of political activism, in terms of people struggling “in-and-against” the system, as one of continuing to perpetuate capitalism through their commitment to abstract labour. He argues that from the Marxist stand-point of “two-fold nature of labour” or abstract labour and concrete labour, that anti-capitalist struggles should be about concrete doing against labour, and not a struggle of labour against capital.